pbu summit booklet

5/19/2018 PBU Summit Booklet

1/1227 October 2014, 3:00 - 7:30 pm

Summit on

Plot-Based UrbanismAdvancing agendas in research, practice and policyHosted by:Sponsored by:Seminar Room 3, Third Floor

James Weir Building,

75 Montrose Street

G1 1XJ - Glasgow


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There is a drive towards thecreation of more compact

and diverse urban settlementpatterns in new places

and towards the repair ofsuburban ones. Likewise there is

increasingly acceptance that inmore fnancially strained times

low-key plot-up approachesto regeneration of older urban

settlements are likely to becomemore relevant than ever before.

J. Tarbatt, The Plot

SummitonPlot-BasedUrbanism

Background

With an increasing trend towards single-use, suburban developments

on large plots, we are in the process of losing the diverse, close-

grain urban fabrics that once served as the foundation for our most

beloved streets and ourishing town centres. This has provoked urbandesigners and town planners, academics, community organizations

and governments at all levels to rethink how to achieve more

sustainable approaches to contemporary placemaking. Based on

the fundamental importance of the plot in urban development, plot-

based urbanism has recently re-emerged as an updated approach

to compact, sustainable urban design and masterplanning.

Plot-based urbanism is built upon earlier traditions of placemaking

and claims to inform urban planning and design strategies in a way

that is not only conducive to incremental growth and mixture of

land uses and tenures but also minimizes adverse economic risks,

encourages informal participation, and respects local culture. Now

that it is receiving growing attention in academia, practice, and local

governments in the UK and Europe, there is no better time to bringtogether leading voices in the discussions surrounding plot-based

urbanism and set new agendas, establish collaborations, and move

towards practical implementation in research, practice and policy.


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Summit

on

Plot-Based

Urbanism

Summit Programme

Keynote and Panel Discussion

3:00 Introduction

Keynote Address

3:20 Returning to the rst principles of urbanismCharles R. Wolfe, Principal,Attorney at Law and author of Urbanism Without Effort

Session 1

3:50 Recalibrating the plot for mixed-use buildingsJonathan Tarbatt,John Thompson & Partners

4:10The Popular Home Initiative using plot-based approachesKelvin Campbell, Smart Urbanism

4:30 Q & A

4:40 BreakSession 2

5:00Urban regeneration in Glasgow through plot-baseddevelopment: The Botany, MaryhillGordon Barbour, Glasgow Housing Association

5:20Control and Transitional Edges: Towards a socio-spatialmorphology for plot-based urbanismKevin Thwaites, University of Shefeld

5:40 Plot-based urbanism: Experiences in developing countries andUN-Habitats latest activitiesSalvatore Fundar, UN-Habitat

6:00 Q & A

6:10 Break

Session 3

6:30 Town centres and the power of plot-based changeDiarmaid Lawlor,Architecture and Design Scotland

6:50 Grow your own Garden City plot-by-plotDavid Rudlin, Urbanism Environment and Design

7:10 Q & A

7:20 Close


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Abstracts & Bio

Principal of Charles R. Wolfe, Attorney at Law and Author

Chuck provides a unique perspective about cities as both a

long time writer about urbanism worldwide and as an attorney in

Seattle, where he focuses on land use and environmental law. In

particular, his work involves the use of sustainable development

techniques and innovative land use regulatory tools on behalf ofboth the private and public sectors.

Returning to the rst principles of urbanism

Charles R. Wolfe, Principal,Attorney at Law and author of Urbanism Without Effort

In order to create vibrant, sustainable urban areas for the long term, we must rst

understand what happens naturally when people congregate in citiesinnate,

unprompted interactions of urban dwellers with each other and their surrounding

urban and physical environment, also known as urbanism without effort.

The keynote will compare the basic similarities between urbanism without effort and

plot-based urbanism. Through an illustrated tour of Urbanism Without Effort (Island

Press, 2013), the keynote will argue that underlying rationales for urban policy,

planning and regulation are best understood from a historical perspective and in a

better understanding of the everyday uses of urban space. Charles Wolfe will draw

upon his years of writing about urbanism as well as his professional experiences as

a land use and environmental lawyer, and will provide case study vignettes from

everyday urban life. Wolfe will argue that successful community is among the rstprinciples of what makes humans feel happy, and therefore city dwellers invariably

celebrate environments where and when they can coexist safely, in a mutually

supportive way.

Wolfe will also explain how such community is often most interesting when it occurs

spontaneouslyseemingly without effort. He will conclude with suggestions of how

to rst isolate these spontaneous and latent examples of successful urban land use,

before applying any prescriptive government policies or initiatives.


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Summit

on

Plot-Based

Urbanism

Urban Designer and Author

Jonathan is a qualied urban designer with 20 years of experience

in the public and private sectors in the UK, Australia and Ireland.

The depth and breadth of his experience and education in the

eld, together with his academic background in urban geography

and sociology, has given him a multi-disciplinary perspective anda unique level of expertise in the built environment.

Recalibrating the plot for mixed-use buildings

Jonathan Tarbatt,John Thompson & Partners

Plots are the smallest increment of land holding. This means they can be developed

differently from one another, and at different times, providing a substrate for

generating diversity of building form that can support other forms of diversity in the

built environment, including variety and a close grain of mixed-use buildings and

mixed communities. This is the key to understanding their place-making potential.

But how small is too small, and how big is big enough?

The presentation explains the relevance of traditional close-grain vertically mixed-

use building typologies (living over the shop) to plot-based urbanism, and why plot-

size matters. It argues that to be viable in todays market, new mixed-use plots must

be congured so that the resultant buildings are able to meet modern standards

and expectations. This is more complicated for mixed-use plots than it is for single

uses, because in order to design something with no detail a plot it is necessary toknow, or at least anticipate, all the detail.

Following a review of how design coding for plots is currently approached in the

Netherlands and Germany, the presentation suggests how an alternative approach

that focusses on the performance of key syntactic relationships - between

buildings, plots, streets and land-uses could help to revive the fortunes of this

endangered building typology, bringing with it the potential to regenerate the

positive characteristics of traditional mixed-use centres in new places. It concludes

by questioning how new mixed-use local centres are currently procured in the UK,suggesting a development model that makes the provision of mixed-use plots more

attractive to stakeholders, is the key to unlocking this potential.


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Urban Designer and Co-Founder of Urban Initiatives

Kelvin was the founder of Urban Initiatives, an internationally

recognised urban design practice based in London. Formerly

Visiting Professor in Urban Design at the University of Westminster

and now a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Advanced Spatial

Analysis at the Bartlett, University College London, he is known asone of the leading gures in his eld.

The Popular Home Initiative using plot-based approaches

Kelvin Campbell, Smart Urbanism

How did housing become so difcult? Our basic instinct is to create shelter, but today

we seem unable to do so. We have a massive problem and things are not getting

better. 325,000 new homes are needed for London alone by 2025, but construction

costs for housing are 40% higher than our mainland European counterparts and

there has been a 50% loss in housing capacity in recent years. Our construction

industry is also now 20% less efcient than it was 20 years ago. Put these facts together

with a lack of nance and new ideas to solve the problem, and we have a serious

challenge one than cannot be solved by using our old models. Housing is not

about the products of high design; it is about the good normal, and we have lost

sight of what this means and urgently need to discover our new urban vernacular.

There are stumbling blocks to housing recovery that are well known. How can we

open up the housing market to a wider set of players? How can we get the benetsof replicability without sacricing design quality? How can we speed up delivery

through the planning system? These are just a few questions that our work on the

Popular Home Initiative seeks to address as we explore inroads into the delivery of

medium density family housing based on a plot-based urbanism approach. There is

no better time like now to get things moving.


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Summit

on

Plot-Based

Urbanism

Gordon is the Development Manager for Wheatley Group, where

he is responsible for Glasgow Housing Associations new build

housing programme in the city, which has completed over 1,100

houses since 2003 and which currently has an annual budget

of around 25 million. Before his career in housing he was an

architect in private practice.

Urban regeneration in Glasgow through plot-baseddevelopment: The Botany, Maryhill

Gordon Barbour, Glasgow Housing Association

Glasgows population is expected to grow signicantly in the next 25 years, after

decades of decline. At the same time it has, as a legacy of population loss and

economic change, a large amount of well-located urban land lying vacant or

derelict, most of which is publicly owned. With limitations on the construction of both

subsidised social housing, and housing for sale by private enterprise, conventional

methods themselves will not be sufcient to prevent displacement of future housing

development to green-eld sites on the urban periphery. A plot-based approach

might therefore offer an appropriate means to unlock the housing development

potential of much of this vacant land in the city.

The plot-based approach to tackling the regeneration of vacant sites in Glasgow will

be considered from the perspective of housing development, moving away fromconventional large-scale master planning which has been shown to lack resilience

in the face of changing economic conditions. This might be replaced by more

open-ended and organic master planning, providing greater access to housing

development through individual participation and small-scale investment, while

setting clear and coherent planning parameters for regenerated neighbourhoods.

The potential for such an approach in the case of Maryhill is investigated, with

thoughts on how it might be presented, as a viable option, to support new housing

environments for people in the city.


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Senior Lecturer

Dr. Thwaites researches and teaches in the Faculty of Social

Sciences (University of Shefeld), where his work focuses on the

development of theory and practice in Experiential Landscape

and Socially Restorative Urbanism. He was the former Course

Leader for Undergraduate Programmes in the LandscapeArchitecture Department at Leeds Metropolitan University and has

also worked in private practice.

Control and Transitional Edges: Towards a socio-spatialmorphology for plot-based urbanism

Kevin Thwaites, University of Shefeld

This presentation will outline a new urban spatial structure called the transitional

edge, which connects social sustainability and human well-being. John Habrakens

discussion about the structure of the ordinary built environment is combined with spatial

concepts from Experiential Landscape research to form an analytical framework. The

resultant transitional edge spatial structure provides an important conceptual thread

reconnecting social and spatial dimensions of urban form to inform planning and design

decision making for urban sustainable living.

Active edges have broad recognition for their relevance to the encouragement of social

life in urban realms. Nevertheless, the practical application of this remains hindered by a

paucity of focused design guidance that can draw together urban spatial organisation

with human well-being. The transitional edge concept addresses this limitation throughan anatomical structure representing different elements of socio-spatial building blocks

for urban settings. This forms the basis for demonstrating the importance to human well-

being of providing edge settings with a wider range of spatial extent than is currently

evident.

The presentation will illustrate examples of the social benets that can accrue from its

application, emphasising in particular: the signicance to human well-being and self-

esteem of adaptable spatial structures; how spatial structure and material arrangement

can give inhabitants better control over the balance of privacy and social interaction;

and how soft green margins in transitional edges can deliver eco-system services

and restorative benets in urban environments.


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Summit

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Urbanism

City Planner

Mr. Fundaro is an experienced architect and city planner

currently working as a consultant at the United Nations Human

Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) Urban Planning and Design

Branch (UPDB) in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked on several

projects in Nairobi and around the world, helping to design, planand coordinate more sustainable planned city extensions and

inll developments.

Plot-based urbanism: Experiences in developing countries andUN-Habitats latest activities

Salvatore Fundar, UN-Habitat

United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) supports countries in

developing urban planning methods and systems that address the current challenges

of urbanization. It promotes urban planning and environmental management

approaches to address climate change mitigation and adaptation in urban areas,

as well as urban biodiversity, urban mobility and energy in the context of sustainable

urban development.

Cities face an enormous backlog of services and housing. There is indeed an urban

planning crisis: the unplanned city is largely inefcient and requires increasing

resources to make it more functional and liveable. In order to further advance

innovations, UN-Habitat proposes: (1) planning in advance of population increaseand leveraging plans for revenue creation through value capture; (2) planning at the

scale of the problem, particularly the projected growth of the urban population; (3)

planning incrementally, starting with streets and following with water and sanitation,

drainage, energy and lighting, transport, etc.; (4) planning for density and mixed

land use; (5) providing urban networks for sustainable mobility and sustainable

energy. In addition, the UN-Habitat Urban Planning & Design Branch (UPDB) has

established a planning laboratory to provide direct support to projects in the eld

through the development of plans and designs. This presentation will share two of

the latest UPDB planning laboratory experiences in developing countries based on

the Planned City Extensions & Inll model.


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Diarmaid is Head of Urbanism with Architecture + Design

Scotland. An urbanist, with a multi disciplinary background, he

has worked for almost 20 years on projects involving the shaping

and implementation of change for clients in Ireland, the UK and

Europe, for the public, private and tertiary sectors.

Town centres and the power of plot-based change

Diarmaid Lawlor,Architecture and Design Scotland

Town centres t the too hard box: too hard to understand, too complex to manage,

too small to matter. The big economic narrative of place is about cities, and their

regions. In this, towns are part of the story of other places.

Imagine though, the town centre as a set of xed spaces which can be re-purposed,

plot by plot, in clusters, and along streets. A massive civic estate, a place with its own

story. Imagine the town centre as a place for public service collaboration, small and

medium enterprise, new forms of participation, creative uses of space, new reasons

to be. Imagine town centres as the best way to deliver collaborative public services,

in places people want to be, in ways that matter.

Imagine the only challenge was to tackle the art of the possible. Imagine we failed

to deliver this potential because we imagined the route was too hard.


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Summit

on

Plot-Based

Urbanism

David Rudlin manages URBED (Urbanism Environment and Design)

and is also a director of the URBED Trust. He is a planner by training,

a founder Academician of the Academy for Urbanism and the

winner of the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize.

Grow your own Garden City plot-by-plot

David Rudlin, Urbanism Environment and Design

URBED has been interested in the plot based urbanism since the late 1970s when

we developed the idea of balanced incremental development. In our book,

Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood, rst published in 1999, we explored the idea of

the trellis and vine. The trellis is the masterplan and the vine is the city that grows onto

the framework created by the plan. We even postulated in the book that the wayto create a good place was to draw a plan, divide it into small plots, auction the

plots and allow them to be developed with no rules whatsoever. This of course was

a ridiculous idea that could never happen, except that it is the way that most of the

urban areas that we love were built.

It is only recently that we have had the opportunity to explore these ideas in practice

and I will talk about three projects currently in our studio. The rst is work on Custom

build with the developer igloo, the second is our Wolfson Prize winning essay, and

the third is a competition entry in Germany where we are exploring a continentalapproach to plot based development at much higher densities. This work is at an

early stage but already it is throwing up a series of issues with the level of regulation,

construction and the interaction with the planning system. These I will explore in my

contribution.


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Department of ArchitectureJames Weir Building75 Montrose Street,Glasgow - G1 1XJ

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